Taking Transcendental Idealism Seriously: Rethinking the Freedom and Determinism Debate

Abstract

http://dx.doi.org/10.13185/BU2013.17105

The dilemma posed by the problem of freedom and determinism can besummarized this way: On the one hand, our recognition of the laws of natureentails that we view the world to be, in an important sense, deterministic. Onthe other hand, our recognition of moral responsibility entails that we viewourselves to be free. In this paper, I will show that the dilemma can be dissolvedif we take Kant’s transcendental idealism seriously. In the process, I will explainwhat amounts to taking such doctrine seriously and present arguments as tohow it can shed light on the issue. By capitalizing on the idea that Kant'stranscendental idealism is an epistemic thesis, it is plausible to maintain thatthe problem of freedom and determinism is really a problem of how to properlyview ourselves in the light of what beings like us can know and hope to knowgiven the limitations of reason. If this is the case, then we can relate Kant’stranscendental idealism with the problem of how human beings can reconcilewhat Searle calls an “interesting tension” between the conceptions that we haveabout the world and about ourselves in relation to the world.